128 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and of the beauty of a regular curve at its ends. Our plough- 

 ing matches are, too often, a trial of the courage of a team 

 rather than a test of its training. It is one thing for spirited 

 animals to work well amid the familiar surroundings of the 

 farm where they were reared. It is another and a different 

 thing for them to do so amid the strange sights and sounds 

 incident to a cattle-show, where all is excitement and com- 

 petition — and where the completion of each furrow must be 

 effected by dint of a desperate charge at a noisy phalanx of 

 men and boys, who have little respect for the proprieties of the 

 place and the occasion, and whose highest idea of a successful 

 cattle-show seems to be realized in securing for themselves a 

 conspicuous position, within the lines at the ploughing match, 

 and within the railing on the horse track. 



But with the ploughman rests, mainly, the question of success 

 or failure. If he is master of his art, his work, on land free 

 from obstructions, will be performed witli but slight expendi- 

 ture of muscular energy. He will not long own or drive 

 animals which he significantly characterizes as " unfacultied," 

 or follow a plough which he can keep in position only by 

 walking on the unploughed sward, with his body at an angle 

 of forty-five degrees from the perpendicular ; or one whose work 

 he is compelled to complete by danting a hornpipe on its half- 

 turned furrows. He will " set in " with precisely his average 

 width of furrow, settling his plough at once to its running 

 depth. He will look carefully forward in search of any inequali- 

 ties in the surface or edge of his land ; for it is one of the best 

 tests of a skilful workman that his furrow is mapped out, to 

 his eye, far in advance of the end of his plough beam. If he 

 turns on the sward, he will leave it unbroken, and his middle 

 furrow will be so completely cleared of sods that a lady might 

 walk it without soiling her prunella. And above all he will be 

 cool and self-possessed, careful to manifest none of that profit- 

 less irritability, under mishaps, which is sometimes witnessed, 

 and which is equally certain to injure the quality of his work 

 and to elicit unfavorable comments from the bystanders. There 

 was no very noticeable deficiency, in these qualifications, in 

 any of the ploughmen at the present exhibition. 



There were three competitors for the two premiums on plough- 

 ing with the Michigan plough. We were entirely unanimous in 



